 During
my ten years as a Chief Knowledge Officer, I spent a lot of time trying
to figure out how people should use knowledge, and to some extent how
people learn, but it never occurred to me to develop an overarching
'theory of knowledge' until I decided to write a book called The Cost of Not Knowing. This article summarizes that theory.
This is not a new epistemology. I am disinterested in academic
arguments that use language, a clumsy and artificial abstraction, to
try to justify theories that to me are needlessly complex,
counter-intuitive and of no practical use. For students of philosophy,
and I'm sure this will come as no surprise to my regular readers, my
theory is consistent with Maurice Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological view
of epistemology. For those interested in the philosophical basis for
this theory, I would recommend David Abram's Spell of the Sensuous,
much of which is devoted to explaining Merleau-Ponty's philosophy. I'm
merely interested in its practical implications, in work and in life.
My theory starts with learning. Learning is the process of direct and
indirect experience and observation, and knowledge is simply the
personal, collected, internalized result of learning. We learn in
different ways (fig.1): The best way is through active participation,
which engages all our senses in the learning experience. Next best is
observation, where we see or hear but where some of our senses are not
engaged. The least effective way is second-hand, through communication
of reports from someone else. When a squirrel learns, by personal trial
and error, how to defeat a baffle on a bird feeder, this is powerful
knowledge, well retained and employed. When that squirrel instead
watches another squirrel show how to do it, the knowledge is less
valuable, less credible. The observing squirrel may not be able to
replicate the other squirrel's moves, and the method may not be the
best one for the observing squirrel, which may have a different
body-weight or dexterity than the demonstrating squirrel's. And if one
squirrel merely tells another, unfamiliar squirrel of the presence of
food in a bird-feeder 'over there' that can be accessed by navigating
around the baffle, that knowledge is even less valuable. The squirrel
listening may doubt whether the baffle was or even can be overcome --
perhaps this second-hand report is merely bragging or a ruse on the
part of the reporting squirrel.
In human activities, we now get almost all of our knowledge
second-hand, through books, newspapers, television and online, and its
relative lack of credibility causes us to develop and assign a trust
'rating' to different sources, based on how often, in our experience
and that of others we trust, that report has turned out to be accurate
or useful. A blogroll is one manifestation of that need to rate the
trust-worthiness of second-hand sources of knowledge. Schools,
unfortunately, now provide almost all learning second-hand, and it is
not surprising that 'field trips' are so loved by students -- an
experience to learn something first-hand. It is also not surprising
that the most effective and credible form of second-hand report is the story, which conveys knowledge in a way highly analogous to the way we might have experienced it personally.
Why do we learn? The squirrel learns in order to survive -- by direct
participation at first in play and then, often by observing its
parents, in gathering food, building a nest etc. The squirrel draws as
well on instinctive
knowledge, which is coded in its DNA as an evolutionary advantage,
which 'teaches' it the knowledge of its ancestors, for example to
'freeze' when it senses a predator species, which is often more
effective than fleeing predators whose eyesight is attuned to motion,
more than shape. That instinctive knowledge also tells it at what
point, as the predator approaches, to flee, based on its ancestors'
cumulative learnings of that point at which the probability of evasion
through flight begins to exceed the probability of non-detection by the
predator. Instinctive knowledge doesn't need to be learned, so it doesn't appear on fig.1 above. We're born with it.
In natural systems, where the community, the physical area in which
animals spend their entire lives, is small and almost completely
'knowable', we learn only to survive and make a living, and because
nature has evolved us, as an adaptive mechanism, to find learning fun
(fig.2). In such closed systems, we can get almost all the knowledge we
need from direct experience and observation, and from our instincts --
there is little need to rely on second-hand reports as a source of
learning. As that physical area that we need to know to survive
increases, we can no longer get by with direct experience and
observation, so we need to evolve languages to convey more and more
knowledge second-hand. Our society becomes inevitably more
interdependent, and in addition to survival there are now three more
reasons to learn:
- To be a responsible citizen
of that society we need to know as much as possible. Crows have fairly
sophisticated and interdependent social structures, with 'travellers'
that move back and forth between different crow communities, carrying
information about the location of food and predators with them, and
they have developed appropriately sophisticated languages to convey
that second-hand knowledge. In fact, they have developed 'body'
languages and sounds that communicate the location of food to other
species (notably wolves and indigenous humans) on which they depend
(since their claws are not strong enough to tear flesh and kill, they
locate food for other species that can, and then eat the leftovers).
- To be an intelligent consumer
we need to know enough to evaluate our choices. In a society where you
don't just eat what you kill and live where your ancestors did, there
are often more choices than we can try out through direct personal
experience.
- To understand our purpose
we need to learn as much as possible about our physical world and the
history of life in it. We have an instinctive desire to understand how
and why things are, which serves an evolutionary purpose -- it helps us
to survive. As we assimilate more and more knowledge we assemble
patterns and theories about how and why things are. These are belief
systems (fig. 3). When early man observed how nature automatically
corrected population and resource imbalances quickly and painlessly, he
began to believe in a higher power. When more recently he invented
civilization, a 'man-made' way to live apart from nature, he developed
new, anthropocentric belief systems to justify and explain this new
'separate' purpose for living. Belief systems so powerful that they
allow us to tolerate, and even celebrate, incredible suffering, and to
ignore and disregard our intuitive knowledge, which is inconsistent
with these belief systems.
So where does all this get us? Of what practical import is this theory?
My prospective book is about the cost of not knowing, and that is the
'so what' of this theory:
- Because we did not know
the degree to which extreme and sustained suffering and outrage
perverts the human mind, and the malleability of those minds, we
allowed the slaughter of nearly a million innocent civilians in Rwanda
in 1994, and of nearly 3000 in the US in 2001.
- Because we did not know
the consequences of reliance on catastrophic agriculture, we allowed
millions to die in the Irish potato famine, eighty million more to die
of starvation in China during Mao's Great Leap Forward, and the
horrendous threats posed today by BSE (Mad Cow), the Asian bird flu,
and as-yet-unevolved diseases and pests that prey on massive
concentrated quantities of astonishingly homogenous, vulnerable human
foods.
- Because we did not know
that nature uses diseases to winnow overcrowding, and that these
diseases will always evolve faster than we can prevent or treat them,
we allowed half the people of Europe to die in the Plague, and more
than one billion to die of Smallpox, and despite 'clues' like AIDS of
what is to come, future diseases we do not yet know, we still have not
taken drastic steps to reduce human overcrowding on our planet.
- Because we did not know
the impact of our wasteful and thoughtless burning of hydrocarbons and
forests on our planet's climate, we now face cataclysmic global warming
and the paradoxical early triggering of the next ice age.
Not knowing led directly
to the loss of biodiversity and much of the carrying capacity of our
Earth, the demise of Enron and its auditors, the Great Depression, the
dot com bust, the atrocities of Stalin, and the Great Extinctions that
regularly obliterate much of life on our planet. And because we still
don't know these things for sure,
we allow ourselves to hesitate, to do nothing, to hope these problems
will magically go away, to allow the conditions that almost certainly
gave rise to these and other disasters to continue, to in fact continue
to get worse.
I had dinner last evening with some of our neighbours, and we were
talking about some of these immense problems, and one of my neighbours,
a student of history, said that no problem in history has ever been
solved until it got so bad for so many that there was a spontaneous
revolution. What would it take,
he asked, before these problems -- overpopulation, famine, oppression,
violence, disease, resource scarcity, pollution, war, suffering,
cruelty, misery -- got bad enough that people would rise up and demand
immediate resolution?
I think the massive unrest and strife we see everywhere in the world
indicates that we have already passed that point. However, in order to
have a revolution there must be (a) consensus on the need for change,
(b) consensus on the change that is needed, and (c) a simple process to
bring about that change. Historically, the solution has been political
-- to oust, violently if necessary, an identifiable oppressor, the
cause of the problem, and replace him (or them) with new leaders
committed to the consensus solution. And although billions have shown
that they see Bush's corporatist imperialism, and the oligopolists'
'free' trade and globalization, to be causes of some
of the major problems we face, once we get rid of these scourges, most
of the biggest problems will remain. These more intractable problems
have no identifiable enemy and, as yet, no consensus solution. They are
systemic problems that
can only be changed by a radical change to our entire global economic
and political systems. And changes to these massive, entrenched and
leaderless systems have historically almost never come about by
political means, but rather by introduction of disruptive technology
innovations that undermine the existing system, as the agricultural and
scientific and industrial revolutions did. It is tempting to believe
that scientists, not collective human energy and collaboration, are the
only hope we have for saving us from ourselves, of rescuing us from our
colossal ignorance.
What is the cost of not knowing when, even if we could communicate
enough knowledge to achieve global consensus on the need for change and
the change that is needed, there is still
no simple process to bring about that change? If we were to magically
and suddenly be able to bring knowledge to bear that would persuade the
vast majority of people on the planet that unless we quickly reduce
human population below one billion and reduce each human ecological
footprint to no more than one eighth of the current Western footprint,
would that be enough to precipitate a combination of voluntary
abstinence, intense social pressures, and (over the objections of the
very powerful elite) laws and taxes and sanctions, to ensure that these
targets were met? We did
bring about the end of slavery this way, and the end of the Vietnam
War, and in much of the world women's suffrage. Is the intractability
of our greatest problems really the lack of a simple, known solution,
or is it rather the lack of consensus on the problem, and of its
severity and urgency and what needs to be done to find a solution? -- The cost of not knowing.
Until the reactionary cult of leadership took over business thinking a
few short years ago, there was a consensus that the best way to run a
business was to agree on and articulate the business' objectives, get
each employee to define their role in achieving those objectives,
remove the obstacles that prevented them from fulfilling those roles
effectively, and otherwise stay out of the way and trust the Wisdom of
Crowds to produce better results than the arrogance of a few. Could the
same principle, applied to the world's most challenging and threatening
problems, work in society as a whole? And if not, why not?
It is the examples of slavery and the 60s peace movement and women's
suffrage that have caused me, insufferable optimist that I am, to think
that there is hope. The solution of reducing human population by 90%
and ecological footprint by 10% (in the third world) to 90% (in the
West) is daunting, but it's also a simple, clear, measurable objective.
And if we have six billion people working on it, convinced that this is
what must be done to save the
world, there's no reason why it shouldn't be achievable. Women choose
not to have babies if they know pregnancy would put their lives in
danger, why wouldn't they choose likewise if they knew it put their world
in danger? Would knowledgeable people agree to participate in an annual
lottery for the right to have a baby, and live with the results, as
they now compromise so many of their 'rights' for the greater good?
Would they agree to a 100% tax on all wealth beyond sustainable
consumption levels, to be distributed to the poor? Would they shut down
permanently businesses that knowingly damage the environment? Would
they abandon urban sprawl and big centralized governments in favour of
self-managed, self-selected, self-sufficient communities if it could be
shown that these are more socially and environmentally responsive, and
responsible, political units? Would they wrench power, by citizen and
consumer action, from unrepentant corporatists who refused to give up
their excessive wealth and influence?
It is hard to give up old paradigms. I know a lot of people that see
the salvation of the world in global government, to which all states
will cede authority. I see no reason to believe that bigger more
powerful governments, which largely got us into this mess, and which
are more removed from the people they supposedly represent, would do
anything but make the problems worse.
But as the Internet has shown, the real power in any system remains at
the ends: The front lines, the communities, where people learn by
direct experience what works and what does not, what makes sense and
what does not. It is as individuals and as members of small communities
that we define ourselves and establish our belief systems and commit
ourselves to action and to change. As citizens and consumers and
members of communities, if we only knew, we could accomplish what needs to be done.
It is time for a bloodless coup, the taking back of power and authority
from central corporatist political and economic institutions and its
reinstatement in local communities and in individuals. To bring it
about, we need only accomplish these four daunting tasks:
- We need to communicate to everyone on the planet, one
person at a time, that there is a better way to live: happier,
healthier, safer, more egalitarian, more harmonious, more responsible,
and sustainable for future generations. We need to tell everyone a new story of our planet's destiny.
- We need to achieve, by a great deal of open conversation,
discussion, and sharing of knowledge, a huge consensus that there are
two root causes underlying all the problems we face today and
preventing us from achieving that better way to live: Overpopulation
and overconsumption, and to set and agree upon deadlines and targets
for solving these two problems. Just as in past we agreed that slavery
and imperialism and suppression of women were our global enemies, we need to agree that overpopulation and overconsumption are our global enemies, a
threat to everything we believe in and a threat to our future. With the
right mix of empirical and intuitive knowledge, we can achieve this
agreement.
- We need to organize six billion people to use their collective wisdom to tell us how to meet these deadlines and targets, and then free them to work in their communities to make it happen.
- We need to help each other clear away obstacles to success.
That means a lot of humanitarian and peacemaking assistance, helping to
build new infrastructure that will work in the new community-based
world, redistributing resources from the rich to the poor, and
disarming those that will try to establish new wealth and power
hierarchies.
So maybe knowledge is power after all. About two centuries ago some new
stories arose that were so compelling that they became the world's
dominant religions, the basis for everything the vast majority of
people on our planet believed, and still believe today. Those stories
spread person to person, by word of mouth, before the printing press
accelerated their influence. At that time the people of our planet were
struggling with the new problems of civilization, like famine, disease,
poverty, addiction and violence, and they were desperate for new
knowledge, a new story, something to give them faith, purpose and
direction. Today we face much greater problems on a much greater scale,
but we also have powerful new resources for spreading knowledge, for
telling a new story. We also have a much better sense of what the root
causes of, and solutions to, our problems are, and knowledge offers
the most potent, perhaps the only, means to achieve global consensus
and global mobilization to solve these problems.
The cost of not knowing is the end of our world. It's too great a cost
to pay, and the answer, if we use the power of knowledge, is within our
collective reach.
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MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
